When a sergeant at the Police Academy asked Mr. Conlon if he had really attended Harvard, he replied with a pettifoggery worthy of his white-shoe classmates: "Not lately, Sarge" is the literal truth camouflaged as sarcasm.

The rest of Dr.T. 's epistle is pettifoggery, but I am surprised that a scholarly person, who should be conversant with the findings of modern Russian history (from Kliuchevsky onward to Crankshaw), would defend the wholly discredited Romanov dynasty, which inflicted such continuous harm on Russian culture.